Features

Here’s the plan—each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact—a truly subjective thing. Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time—and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs—just private message me!)

"Lady With A Fan"

“Terrapin Station.” Kind of a big song. When Terrapin Station, the album, came out, it seemed somehow too big, too produced, too slick and orchestrated for many of us. But hearing it in concert made it clear—this was the real deal. The song suite could be delivered with a huge impact in concert, and it was, over and over through the remaining years of the band’s performing.

As a suite, I thought maybe we could discuss it over the course of two, maybe even three weeks, because there are a lot of moving parts to deal with, and I think there will be some very interesting discussion!

So, here goes….

“Lady With a Fan” opens the Terrapin Station suite with an invocation to the muse, asking for inspiration.

The invocation of the muse is a device from the classical tradition, and the invocation was traditionally asking for inspiration from one of the goddesses called Muses who governed the arts, science, and literature. The very word is the root for so much of western civilization, including music itself, as well as museum, muse (as in think), and more. A poet invoking the muse was giving a conscious indicator to his or her listeners that that the poet was about to embark on a work within the accepted traditions and forms, as in Homer, invoking the muse in Book One of The Odyssey, or Virgil in the Aeneid, on through more modern classically-inspired poets such as Milton.

Hunter has often referred to his muse in interviews, but this is the only song in which she is consciously and conspicuously invoked. The opening lines lend a grandeur completely atypical of rock and roll in general to the verses that follow. The tradition within which he is working, though, is specific: he will use rhyme (as a token—perhaps as in a method of remembering, which is the purpose of rhyme in poetry); he will adhere to some metric principles in order to suggest rhythm. I love the way that line rolls off Garcia’s tongue: “in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm…”—indeed, the rhythm is not only suggested by the line, it is mandated by it, especially the word “suggesting” itself.

Hunter goes a step or two further in his request of the muse, asking that the inspiration he seeks should not be fragmentary, but should last until the “tale is told and done.” In the light of the way in which the song came to be realized on Terrapin Station, I find this very interesting, and later lyrics have a different significance viewed in the light of this part of the invocation. Bear with me, here—I am trying to get at just a few salient points in a post about a song that could, I believe, be the subject of a very long essay.

Last week, I asked whether readers of this blog felt that a post about “Terrapin Station” should be a single post, or broken into its component parts. I’m opting for the latter, but it seems necessary to point out certain relationships between the parts, for instance, in the invocation of the muse. So, I would note that the second section of the suite, “Terrapin Station,” also begins with an invocation, calling for inspiration to move the poet.

Having established, basically via a prayer, that he intends to tell a story that can be sung and remembered, Hunter proceeds immediately into the story itself.

It’s a version of a 19th-century ballad, “The Brave Lieutenant,” and much ink has already been spilled demonstrating how Hunter’s version begins with the rough outlines of that ballad but then proceeds on a different course. (Alex Allan’s wonderful “Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder” website gives the words to “Lady of Carlisle,” as sung, according to traditional words by Hunter on his Jack o’ Roses album, and traces the sources back to an actual anecdote recorded in a volume of essays published in the 1750s, "Essais Historiques sur Paris", by Germain-François Poullain de Sainte-Foix, a compilation of the authors explanations of the origins of place names in Paris. Allan translates the following note himself:

Rue des Lions, near Saint-Paul

The street took its name from the building and yards where the large and small lions owned by the King were kept. One day when Francis I was enjoying watching a fight between his lions, a lady dropped her glove, and said to de Lorges: if you want me to believe that you love me as much as you swear every day that you do, go and pick up my glove. De Lorges climbed down, picked up the glove in the middle of these fearsome beasts, climbed back, threw it in the lady's face, and since then, despite all the advances and pleadings that she made to him, would never see her again.

The story remains much the same through telling by the German poet Schiller, a version by Leigh Hunt, and one by Robert Browning, and eventually into the ballad which Hunter sings, fairly true to the traditional versions, on his album.

Some of Hunter’s lyrical touches in his version of the ballad are touchstones for listeners. Captured in that first invocation verse is the wish that “things we’ve never seen will seem familiar.” I think that sums up quite nicely certain aspects of the Grateful Dead experience as a whole—we come to a place of familiarity (“family”) in the context of a Grateful Dead concert, which can seem most apt when things are the strangest.

Then, a “door within the fire” opens, and a girl is standing there. Her appearance is left to the individual listener’s fancy—whatever that fancy might paint as fair.

The course of the story itself seems a simple one of one potential partner taking a risk for love, whether or not that might have been wise. We are not told the end. The storyteller’s role is described as one, not of mastery of the situation or control of it, but of shedding light on it, allowing others to see it more clearly, or differently. I always particularly loved that—it seems a good description of the role of any kind of artist.

Recently, in writing about “Rosemary,” I discussed briefly Hunter’s and Garcia’s, but especially Garcia’s attachment to and affection for the fragment, as a particular form of sung poetry that has the power to raise the hair on the arms in amazement and surmise.

Looking at the entire suite for just a moment, we can see that Hunter breaks up the movements into Part One (“Lady with a Fan,” “Terrapin Station,” “At A Siding”) and Part Two (“Return to Terrapin,” “Ivory Wheels, Rosewood Track,” “And I Know You,” “Jack O’ Roses,” “Leaving Terrapin,” and “Recognition”). He wrote the following as an introduction in his Box of Rain:

I wrote Terrapin, Part One, at a single sitting in an unfurnished house with a picture window overlooking San Francisco Bay during a flamboyant lightning storm. I typed the first thing that came into my mind at the top of the page, the title Terrapin Station.

Not knowing what it was to be about, I began my writing with an invocation to the muse and kept typing as the story began to unfold.

On the same day, driving into the city, Garcia was struck by a singular inspiration. He turned his car around and hurried home to set down some music that popped into his head, demanding immediate attention.

When we met the next day, I showed him the words and he said "I've got the music." They dovetailed perfectly and Terrapin edged into this dimension.

Part One was for free. A good deal of Part Two, the essential idea, was contained in the first writing, but was too irregular to be easily set. I went through many approaches and versions over the years, having lost the original typescript, attempting to recapture the initial spark and place it in a lyrics context.

"Jack O'Roses" and "Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track" are examples of subsequent attempts to complete the cycle. They are included here as part of the suite since they do have pieces of the resolution within them, but they did not really satisfy the initial inspiration. I've omitted or changed a few lines from "Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track," as I originally recorded it, feeling that they do not serve the rest of the work well.

And, in the second edition of the anthology, Hunter added this note:

It is notoriously difficult to return to the particular space of a spontaneous vision--but I wasn't content with my earlier attempt to complete the Terrapin cycle. Cycle is the key word. The piece seemed to demand a legitimate return to its starting point but just how to accomplish this evaded me. The problem was that I was looking outside the song for clues when the solution, implicit in Lady With A Fan, lay in plain sight the whole time.

With the following revision, I feel as near as I'm likely to get to the initiating flash, this far removed in time. It's a moot point whether my continuing engagement with the suite is symptomatic of my own attempts to Return To Terrapin, but a feeling of deep relief comes with the sense of finally getting it closer to heart's desire--concluding and adding this annotation just as a good hard storm breaks.

So, for those of us utterly familiar with the recorded and performed versions of Terrapin Station as played by the Grateful Dead, there exists, beyond those versions, this expanded body of material that attempts to fulfill the promise of the tale “being told and done” in the run-up to the story of the lady with a fan.

Reading Part Two almost gives us too much in the way of keys, hints, clues, and possible resolutions, not just for Terrapin Station, but for a number of Grateful Dead songs (originals and traditional songs) whose stories seem fragmentary. You get the sense of Hunter putting a bow on the repertoire in some way.

I would really recommend that everyone just stop right now, and read the entire set of lyrics for the suite, which can be found conveniently compiled on Alex Allan’s Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder site.

If you did that just now, you’ll see what I mean about Part Two. We have Billy Lyons, Peggy-O, Venus rising from the sea, the setting of the bayou, smokestack thunder, and other characters, phrases, references, and notions vying for their place in the bigger story. And if you read on down through the other parts, there’s even more resolution.

But I almost wish that Part Two didn’t exist, because so much is perfect about the lack of resolution. A big part of the Hunter / Garcia collaboration wound up being the space between everything that happens, and the space after it happens, where we are left filling in the blanks in our own minds or coming up with ways the stories might yet play out—the charm and the lure of the fragment of a story. After all, “since the end is never told…”

Next week: we pay the teller off in gold, in hopes he will come back….

Here’s the plan—each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact—a truly subjective thing. Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time—and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs—just private message me!)

"Lady With A Fan"

“Terrapin Station.” Kind of a big song. When Terrapin Station, the album, came out, it seemed somehow too big, too produced, too slick and orchestrated for many of us. But hearing it in concert made it clear—this was the real deal. The song suite could be delivered with a huge impact in concert, and it was, over and over through the remaining years of the band’s performing.

As a suite, I thought maybe we could discuss it over the course of two, maybe even three weeks, because there are a lot of moving parts to deal with, and I think there will be some very interesting discussion!

So, here goes….

“Lady With a Fan” opens the Terrapin Station suite with an invocation to the muse, asking for inspiration.

The invocation of the muse is a device from the classical tradition, and the invocation was traditionally asking for inspiration from one of the goddesses called Muses who governed the arts, science, and literature. The very word is the root for so much of western civilization, including music itself, as well as museum, muse (as in think), and more. A poet invoking the muse was giving a conscious indicator to his or her listeners that that the poet was about to embark on a work within the accepted traditions and forms, as in Homer, invoking the muse in Book One of The Odyssey, or Virgil in the Aeneid, on through more modern classically-inspired poets such as Milton.

Hunter has often referred to his muse in interviews, but this is the only song in which she is consciously and conspicuously invoked. The opening lines lend a grandeur completely atypical of rock and roll in general to the verses that follow. The tradition within which he is working, though, is specific: he will use rhyme (as a token—perhaps as in a method of remembering, which is the purpose of rhyme in poetry); he will adhere to some metric principles in order to suggest rhythm. I love the way that line rolls off Garcia’s tongue: “in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm…”—indeed, the rhythm is not only suggested by the line, it is mandated by it, especially the word “suggesting” itself.

Hunter goes a step or two further in his request of the muse, asking that the inspiration he seeks should not be fragmentary, but should last until the “tale is told and done.” In the light of the way in which the song came to be realized on Terrapin Station, I find this very interesting, and later lyrics have a different significance viewed in the light of this part of the invocation. Bear with me, here—I am trying to get at just a few salient points in a post about a song that could, I believe, be the subject of a very long essay.

Last week, I asked whether readers of this blog felt that a post about “Terrapin Station” should be a single post, or broken into its component parts. I’m opting for the latter, but it seems necessary to point out certain relationships between the parts, for instance, in the invocation of the muse. So, I would note that the second section of the suite, “Terrapin Station,” also begins with an invocation, calling for inspiration to move the poet.

Having established, basically via a prayer, that he intends to tell a story that can be sung and remembered, Hunter proceeds immediately into the story itself.

It’s a version of a 19th-century ballad, “The Brave Lieutenant,” and much ink has already been spilled demonstrating how Hunter’s version begins with the rough outlines of that ballad but then proceeds on a different course. (Alex Allan’s wonderful “Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder” website gives the words to “Lady of Carlisle,” as sung, according to traditional words by Hunter on his Jack o’ Roses album, and traces the sources back to an actual anecdote recorded in a volume of essays published in the 1750s, "Essais Historiques sur Paris", by Germain-François Poullain de Sainte-Foix, a compilation of the authors explanations of the origins of place names in Paris. Allan translates the following note himself:

Rue des Lions, near Saint-Paul

The street took its name from the building and yards where the large and small lions owned by the King were kept. One day when Francis I was enjoying watching a fight between his lions, a lady dropped her glove, and said to de Lorges: if you want me to believe that you love me as much as you swear every day that you do, go and pick up my glove. De Lorges climbed down, picked up the glove in the middle of these fearsome beasts, climbed back, threw it in the lady's face, and since then, despite all the advances and pleadings that she made to him, would never see her again.

The story remains much the same through telling by the German poet Schiller, a version by Leigh Hunt, and one by Robert Browning, and eventually into the ballad which Hunter sings, fairly true to the traditional versions, on his album.

Some of Hunter’s lyrical touches in his version of the ballad are touchstones for listeners. Captured in that first invocation verse is the wish that “things we’ve never seen will seem familiar.” I think that sums up quite nicely certain aspects of the Grateful Dead experience as a whole—we come to a place of familiarity (“family”) in the context of a Grateful Dead concert, which can seem most apt when things are the strangest.

Then, a “door within the fire” opens, and a girl is standing there. Her appearance is left to the individual listener’s fancy—whatever that fancy might paint as fair.

The course of the story itself seems a simple one of one potential partner taking a risk for love, whether or not that might have been wise. We are not told the end. The storyteller’s role is described as one, not of mastery of the situation or control of it, but of shedding light on it, allowing others to see it more clearly, or differently. I always particularly loved that—it seems a good description of the role of any kind of artist.

Recently, in writing about “Rosemary,” I discussed briefly Hunter’s and Garcia’s, but especially Garcia’s attachment to and affection for the fragment, as a particular form of sung poetry that has the power to raise the hair on the arms in amazement and surmise.

Looking at the entire suite for just a moment, we can see that Hunter breaks up the movements into Part One (“Lady with a Fan,” “Terrapin Station,” “At A Siding”) and Part Two (“Return to Terrapin,” “Ivory Wheels, Rosewood Track,” “And I Know You,” “Jack O’ Roses,” “Leaving Terrapin,” and “Recognition”). He wrote the following as an introduction in his Box of Rain:

I wrote Terrapin, Part One, at a single sitting in an unfurnished house with a picture window overlooking San Francisco Bay during a flamboyant lightning storm. I typed the first thing that came into my mind at the top of the page, the title Terrapin Station.

Not knowing what it was to be about, I began my writing with an invocation to the muse and kept typing as the story began to unfold.

On the same day, driving into the city, Garcia was struck by a singular inspiration. He turned his car around and hurried home to set down some music that popped into his head, demanding immediate attention.

When we met the next day, I showed him the words and he said "I've got the music." They dovetailed perfectly and Terrapin edged into this dimension.

Part One was for free. A good deal of Part Two, the essential idea, was contained in the first writing, but was too irregular to be easily set. I went through many approaches and versions over the years, having lost the original typescript, attempting to recapture the initial spark and place it in a lyrics context.

"Jack O'Roses" and "Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track" are examples of subsequent attempts to complete the cycle. They are included here as part of the suite since they do have pieces of the resolution within them, but they did not really satisfy the initial inspiration. I've omitted or changed a few lines from "Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track," as I originally recorded it, feeling that they do not serve the rest of the work well.

And, in the second edition of the anthology, Hunter added this note:

It is notoriously difficult to return to the particular space of a spontaneous vision--but I wasn't content with my earlier attempt to complete the Terrapin cycle. Cycle is the key word. The piece seemed to demand a legitimate return to its starting point but just how to accomplish this evaded me. The problem was that I was looking outside the song for clues when the solution, implicit in Lady With A Fan, lay in plain sight the whole time.

With the following revision, I feel as near as I'm likely to get to the initiating flash, this far removed in time. It's a moot point whether my continuing engagement with the suite is symptomatic of my own attempts to Return To Terrapin, but a feeling of deep relief comes with the sense of finally getting it closer to heart's desire--concluding and adding this annotation just as a good hard storm breaks.

So, for those of us utterly familiar with the recorded and performed versions of Terrapin Station as played by the Grateful Dead, there exists, beyond those versions, this expanded body of material that attempts to fulfill the promise of the tale “being told and done” in the run-up to the story of the lady with a fan.

Reading Part Two almost gives us too much in the way of keys, hints, clues, and possible resolutions, not just for Terrapin Station, but for a number of Grateful Dead songs (originals and traditional songs) whose stories seem fragmentary. You get the sense of Hunter putting a bow on the repertoire in some way.

I would really recommend that everyone just stop right now, and read the entire set of lyrics for the suite, which can be found conveniently compiled on Alex Allan’s Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder site.

If you did that just now, you’ll see what I mean about Part Two. We have Billy Lyons, Peggy-O, Venus rising from the sea, the setting of the bayou, smokestack thunder, and other characters, phrases, references, and notions vying for their place in the bigger story. And if you read on down through the other parts, there’s even more resolution.

But I almost wish that Part Two didn’t exist, because so much is perfect about the lack of resolution. A big part of the Hunter / Garcia collaboration wound up being the space between everything that happens, and the space after it happens, where we are left filling in the blanks in our own minds or coming up with ways the stories might yet play out—the charm and the lure of the fragment of a story. After all, “since the end is never told…”

Next week: we pay the teller off in gold, in hopes he will come back….

Member for

Here’s the plan—each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact—a truly subjective thing. Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time—and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs—just private message me!)

"Lady With A Fan"

“Terrapin Station.” Kind of a big song. When Terrapin Station, the album, came out, it seemed somehow too big, too produced, too slick and orchestrated for many of us. But hearing it in concert made it clear—this was the real deal. The song suite could be delivered with a huge impact in concert, and it was, over and over through the remaining years of the band’s performing.

As a suite, I thought maybe we could discuss it over the course of two, maybe even three weeks, because there are a lot of moving parts to deal with, and I think there will be some very interesting discussion!

So, here goes….

“Lady With a Fan” opens the Terrapin Station suite with an invocation to the muse, asking for inspiration.

The invocation of the muse is a device from the classical tradition, and the invocation was traditionally asking for inspiration from one of the goddesses called Muses who governed the arts, science, and literature. The very word is the root for so much of western civilization, including music itself, as well as museum, muse (as in think), and more. A poet invoking the muse was giving a conscious indicator to his or her listeners that that the poet was about to embark on a work within the accepted traditions and forms, as in Homer, invoking the muse in Book One of The Odyssey, or Virgil in the Aeneid, on through more modern classically-inspired poets such as Milton.

Hunter has often referred to his muse in interviews, but this is the only song in which she is consciously and conspicuously invoked. The opening lines lend a grandeur completely atypical of rock and roll in general to the verses that follow. The tradition within which he is working, though, is specific: he will use rhyme (as a token—perhaps as in a method of remembering, which is the purpose of rhyme in poetry); he will adhere to some metric principles in order to suggest rhythm. I love the way that line rolls off Garcia’s tongue: “in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm…”—indeed, the rhythm is not only suggested by the line, it is mandated by it, especially the word “suggesting” itself.

Hunter goes a step or two further in his request of the muse, asking that the inspiration he seeks should not be fragmentary, but should last until the “tale is told and done.” In the light of the way in which the song came to be realized on Terrapin Station, I find this very interesting, and later lyrics have a different significance viewed in the light of this part of the invocation. Bear with me, here—I am trying to get at just a few salient points in a post about a song that could, I believe, be the subject of a very long essay.

Last week, I asked whether readers of this blog felt that a post about “Terrapin Station” should be a single post, or broken into its component parts. I’m opting for the latter, but it seems necessary to point out certain relationships between the parts, for instance, in the invocation of the muse. So, I would note that the second section of the suite, “Terrapin Station,” also begins with an invocation, calling for inspiration to move the poet.

Having established, basically via a prayer, that he intends to tell a story that can be sung and remembered, Hunter proceeds immediately into the story itself.

It’s a version of a 19th-century ballad, “The Brave Lieutenant,” and much ink has already been spilled demonstrating how Hunter’s version begins with the rough outlines of that ballad but then proceeds on a different course. (Alex Allan’s wonderful “Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder” website gives the words to “Lady of Carlisle,” as sung, according to traditional words by Hunter on his Jack o’ Roses album, and traces the sources back to an actual anecdote recorded in a volume of essays published in the 1750s, "Essais Historiques sur Paris", by Germain-François Poullain de Sainte-Foix, a compilation of the authors explanations of the origins of place names in Paris. Allan translates the following note himself:

Rue des Lions, near Saint-Paul

The street took its name from the building and yards where the large and small lions owned by the King were kept. One day when Francis I was enjoying watching a fight between his lions, a lady dropped her glove, and said to de Lorges: if you want me to believe that you love me as much as you swear every day that you do, go and pick up my glove. De Lorges climbed down, picked up the glove in the middle of these fearsome beasts, climbed back, threw it in the lady's face, and since then, despite all the advances and pleadings that she made to him, would never see her again.

The story remains much the same through telling by the German poet Schiller, a version by Leigh Hunt, and one by Robert Browning, and eventually into the ballad which Hunter sings, fairly true to the traditional versions, on his album.

Some of Hunter’s lyrical touches in his version of the ballad are touchstones for listeners. Captured in that first invocation verse is the wish that “things we’ve never seen will seem familiar.” I think that sums up quite nicely certain aspects of the Grateful Dead experience as a whole—we come to a place of familiarity (“family”) in the context of a Grateful Dead concert, which can seem most apt when things are the strangest.

Then, a “door within the fire” opens, and a girl is standing there. Her appearance is left to the individual listener’s fancy—whatever that fancy might paint as fair.

The course of the story itself seems a simple one of one potential partner taking a risk for love, whether or not that might have been wise. We are not told the end. The storyteller’s role is described as one, not of mastery of the situation or control of it, but of shedding light on it, allowing others to see it more clearly, or differently. I always particularly loved that—it seems a good description of the role of any kind of artist.

Recently, in writing about “Rosemary,” I discussed briefly Hunter’s and Garcia’s, but especially Garcia’s attachment to and affection for the fragment, as a particular form of sung poetry that has the power to raise the hair on the arms in amazement and surmise.

Looking at the entire suite for just a moment, we can see that Hunter breaks up the movements into Part One (“Lady with a Fan,” “Terrapin Station,” “At A Siding”) and Part Two (“Return to Terrapin,” “Ivory Wheels, Rosewood Track,” “And I Know You,” “Jack O’ Roses,” “Leaving Terrapin,” and “Recognition”). He wrote the following as an introduction in his Box of Rain:

I wrote Terrapin, Part One, at a single sitting in an unfurnished house with a picture window overlooking San Francisco Bay during a flamboyant lightning storm. I typed the first thing that came into my mind at the top of the page, the title Terrapin Station.

Not knowing what it was to be about, I began my writing with an invocation to the muse and kept typing as the story began to unfold.

On the same day, driving into the city, Garcia was struck by a singular inspiration. He turned his car around and hurried home to set down some music that popped into his head, demanding immediate attention.

When we met the next day, I showed him the words and he said "I've got the music." They dovetailed perfectly and Terrapin edged into this dimension.

Part One was for free. A good deal of Part Two, the essential idea, was contained in the first writing, but was too irregular to be easily set. I went through many approaches and versions over the years, having lost the original typescript, attempting to recapture the initial spark and place it in a lyrics context.

"Jack O'Roses" and "Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track" are examples of subsequent attempts to complete the cycle. They are included here as part of the suite since they do have pieces of the resolution within them, but they did not really satisfy the initial inspiration. I've omitted or changed a few lines from "Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track," as I originally recorded it, feeling that they do not serve the rest of the work well.

And, in the second edition of the anthology, Hunter added this note:

It is notoriously difficult to return to the particular space of a spontaneous vision--but I wasn't content with my earlier attempt to complete the Terrapin cycle. Cycle is the key word. The piece seemed to demand a legitimate return to its starting point but just how to accomplish this evaded me. The problem was that I was looking outside the song for clues when the solution, implicit in Lady With A Fan, lay in plain sight the whole time.

With the following revision, I feel as near as I'm likely to get to the initiating flash, this far removed in time. It's a moot point whether my continuing engagement with the suite is symptomatic of my own attempts to Return To Terrapin, but a feeling of deep relief comes with the sense of finally getting it closer to heart's desire--concluding and adding this annotation just as a good hard storm breaks.

So, for those of us utterly familiar with the recorded and performed versions of Terrapin Station as played by the Grateful Dead, there exists, beyond those versions, this expanded body of material that attempts to fulfill the promise of the tale “being told and done” in the run-up to the story of the lady with a fan.

Reading Part Two almost gives us too much in the way of keys, hints, clues, and possible resolutions, not just for Terrapin Station, but for a number of Grateful Dead songs (originals and traditional songs) whose stories seem fragmentary. You get the sense of Hunter putting a bow on the repertoire in some way.

I would really recommend that everyone just stop right now, and read the entire set of lyrics for the suite, which can be found conveniently compiled on Alex Allan’s Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder site.

If you did that just now, you’ll see what I mean about Part Two. We have Billy Lyons, Peggy-O, Venus rising from the sea, the setting of the bayou, smokestack thunder, and other characters, phrases, references, and notions vying for their place in the bigger story. And if you read on down through the other parts, there’s even more resolution.

But I almost wish that Part Two didn’t exist, because so much is perfect about the lack of resolution. A big part of the Hunter / Garcia collaboration wound up being the space between everything that happens, and the space after it happens, where we are left filling in the blanks in our own minds or coming up with ways the stories might yet play out—the charm and the lure of the fragment of a story. After all, “since the end is never told…”

Next week: we pay the teller off in gold, in hopes he will come back….

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“Terrapin Station.” Kind of a big song. When Terrapin Station, the album, came out, it seemed somehow too big, too produced, too slick and orchestrated for many of us. But hearing it in concert made it clear—this was the real deal.

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Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Lady With A Fan"

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“Terrapin Station.” Kind of a big song. When Terrapin Station, the album, came out, it seemed somehow too big, too produced, too slick and orchestrated for many of us. But hearing it in concert made it clear—this was the real deal.

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“Terrapin Station.” Kind of a big song. When Terrapin Station, the album, came out, it seemed somehow too big, too produced, too slick and orchestrated for many of us. But hearing it in concert made it clear—this was the real deal.

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"The story teller makes no choice. Soon you will not hear his voice.His job is to shed light, and not to master".
This is always how I've approached Hunter's lyrics. He's very good at saying thing I know and feel but do not have he eloquence to state.
I can't wait to see my muse in NYC in a few weeks.

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This was one of my most egregiously mis-heard lyrics. I always heard it as "a dog within the fire creeps" ... ouch!
The Terrapin Suite holds incredible mystery to me. How did the sailor feel about the lady after her petulant (fucked-up??) actions? How did he feel about the soldier, whom I always saw as an alter-ego/alternate universe version of the sailor???
And the over-riding question is, what is the organizing theme behind this whole Terrapin Suite? I didn't vote on how to approach it (no "best" way IMO), so I can't state this as a criticism, but to me the suite needs to be understood holistically. The Lady With a Fan part is just a piece of the puzzle.
But this first bit by itself is a beautiful song in so many ways. David is right to highlight the glee with which Jerry always sang this, like here was a folk song that stood alone with the best of them, and he couldn't wait to tell us this story. Is it because it's a microcosm of male-female relations though? Probably not, I doubt it has a deep literal meaning.
Maybe what this really is about is an introduction of the role of the storyteller. In this fragment he's a real person, who can be spoken of in the third person. But soon we will not hear his voice. Is the meaning that in the other parts of the suite the storyteller is even more real? Is a storyteller essential to reality?? Maybe the Lady With a Fan segment is a brief window ... or maybe we've been staring into the fire too long.

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I went to the March run at Winterland in '77. I had no idea they even had started playing this and I had only been listening to them since I caught them at Lindley Meadow in '75. I remember at the time that the opening left me rapt at its novelty and I became very attentive to what was to follow.

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Was living in Missoula when Terrapin Station was released. Previewed it with friends on Pat the sneaks quad system at Stoker Manor. First time hearing Terrapin live was at Winterland 12/29/77. Ah where do all the years go. Was at Ratdog in Phoenix last Monday night. Great backup band. First time seeing Bob Weir in 10 years since "The Dead" in Phoenix. I had fun. The Wheel was a high point.

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David, I'm a little confused as to how you'd like to discuss this. You say "As a suite, I thought maybe we could discuss it over the course of two, maybe even three weeks, because there are a lot of moving parts to deal with." And later you say that you've opted to break it into "component parts." Your essay covers just the Lady With a Fan part, but there are 9(?) parts in all, or is it 2? If 2, shouldn't you have included your take on the Terrapin Station and At a Siding parts with the first week's essay? Or are we discussing just what the Dead performed??
Oh well, I think people will say what they want to say anyway, when they want to say it. This *is* the Land of Tales after all! :)

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Im not sure where to begin because I could talk all day long about the topic of a muse. Since Hunter has invoked the muse at the beginning of the song, the rest of the lyrics are allowed to be a little mysterious, right? The lyrics are, to me, more of a song about that...the spiritual dance between the muse and the artist. Everything that comes from the muse is basically arbitrary. Hunter is just pointing out moments of where ideas have come to him...something he could shape into later. Anyone reading this who has ever had a spark of creativity or inspiration knows that it doesn't do it all for you, it just gets the ball rolling. "his job is to shed light, not to master." The sailor and the lady from Carlisle could be replaced easily with some other Idea but the song would still have that same feeling. Maybe?
Funny enough, After I first read David's Annotated lyric book, I went pretty deep into the topic of a muse. Since most people on here are probably Dylan fans too, and the GD played a good amount of Dylan songs, Ill point this out. He has several songs that could easily be about a muse but could easily be mistaken for your basic love song. Of course this is all merely speculation but My favorite example is "She belongs To Me." She's nobody's child but she also takes somewhat of a spiritual role..."bow down to her on Sunday." I have a few other examples of Dylan songs but Ill stop here.

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The second verse of Terrapin Station is one of the most lyrical, marvelous, pieces the Dead have ever done. Everyone in the band contributes to it. When this is sung the raucous crowd knows to stop for a moment and listen to the crickets and cicadas singing.
By this second verse, the storyteller has disappeared and we're in the vortex, being transported up(?), sideways(?), through(?) to Terrapin Station, where the stories all come true. It seems to us that we're stationary, taking a bearing on the moon and hearing the sounds of Earth. But we're actually traveling at the speed of thought to Terrapin, and I know we'll be there soon.
I can recall Chris Robinson singing this once with P&F, his long face made even graver with the knowledge that he was singing such beautiful words.

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Well, this whole things was bound to get a bit confusing (and the standard advice for that is...just listen to the music play), but I guess I had in mind that people should and could chime in on whatever was blogged in any given post, saving comments on subsequent parts of the Suite for the following week. But no matter--I did figure people would feel free, and should feel free to talk about whatever occurred to us! I just didn't want to write a 6,000 word blog post that would fall into that dreaded TL/DR category.

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The Rhythm of Lady with a Fan feels like Riding
on the back of a Turtle
Skipping through a Garden
and the Tripping and Falling
down a Rabbit Hole
into a deeper place that full of
"Things we've never Seen"
"Winds both Foul and Fair all Swarm"
Its good to be aware of this when you have plunged into a rabbit hole.
Muses are like Merry Pranksters,
they will keep you on your toes and are mighty unpredictable
and not entirely trustworthy.
( but there is One that is Bright and Shines the Best)
"You Decide"
"The Story Teller Makes No Choice"
Love and Joy and Peace are Spiritual.
Fear and Anguish and Bitterness are also Spiritual.
Its the age old struggle of Good verse Evil
and thus we "wrestle with the angels..."
If we boil the message of Lady with a Fan
all down we might settle on
Love verse Fear.
Which Wind will we allow to Move Us?
Will our Love enable us to overcome the Fear of entering a Lion's Den?
and Just what kind of Wind (or Muse) is moving the Lady to put the man in such Peril?
( I hadn't ever considered that aspect until now reading David's essay )
Well...as I write I feel the inspiration forsaking me so I will bring it to a close.
Each one of us must decide for ourselves what is wise.
As the Fair and Foul blow about us
we need to set our sails appropriately.
May the Wind you choose to Ride
Move you Brightly until
Your "Tale is Told and Done."

The Rhythm of Lady with a Fan feels like Riding
on the back of a Turtle
Skipping through a Garden
and the Tripping and Falling
down a Rabbit Hole
into a deeper place that full of
"Things we've never Seen"
"Winds both Foul and Fair all Swarm"
Its good to be aware of this when you have plunged into a rabbit hole.
Muses are like Merry Pranksters,
they will keep you on your toes and are mighty unpredictable
and not entirely trustworthy.
( but there is One that is Bright and Shines the Best)
"You Decide"
"The Story Teller Makes No Choice"
Love and Joy and Peace are Spiritual.
Fear and Anguish and Bitterness are also Spiritual.
Its the age old struggle of Good verse Evil
and thus we "wrestle with the angels..."
If we boil the message of Lady with a Fan
all down we might settle on
Love verse Fear.
Which Wind will we allow to Move Us?
Will our Love enable us to overcome the Fear of entering a Lion's Den?
and Just what kind of Wind (or Muse) is moving the Lady to put the man in such Peril?
( I hadn't ever considered that aspect until now reading David's essay )
Well...as I write I feel the inspiration forsaking me so I will bring it to a close.
Each one of us must decide for ourselves what is wise.
As the Fair and Foul blow about us
we need to set our sails appropriately.
May the Wind you choose to Ride
Move you Brightly until
Your "Tale is Told and Done."

ddodd

4 years 4 months ago

Discussion ensued...

Well, this whole things was bound to get a bit confusing (and the standard advice for that is...just listen to the music play), but I guess I had in mind that people should and could chime in on whatever was blogged in any given post, saving comments on subsequent parts of the Suite for the following week. But no matter--I did figure people would feel free, and should feel free to talk about whatever occurred to us! I just didn't want to write a 6,000 word blog post that would fall into that dreaded TL/DR category.

jbxpro

4 years 4 months ago

Another Bit

The second verse of Terrapin Station is one of the most lyrical, marvelous, pieces the Dead have ever done. Everyone in the band contributes to it. When this is sung the raucous crowd knows to stop for a moment and listen to the crickets and cicadas singing.
By this second verse, the storyteller has disappeared and we're in the vortex, being transported up(?), sideways(?), through(?) to Terrapin Station, where the stories all come true. It seems to us that we're stationary, taking a bearing on the moon and hearing the sounds of Earth. But we're actually traveling at the speed of thought to Terrapin, and I know we'll be there soon.
I can recall Chris Robinson singing this once with P&F, his long face made even graver with the knowledge that he was singing such beautiful words.

Strider 88

4 years 4 months ago

Charlie Haden 8/6/37-7/11/14

"It's up to us (musicians) to bring beauty back into this world". Charlie Haden, Bass player who helped to create free jazz with Ornette Coleman

mustin321

4 years 4 months ago

where to begin?

Im not sure where to begin because I could talk all day long about the topic of a muse. Since Hunter has invoked the muse at the beginning of the song, the rest of the lyrics are allowed to be a little mysterious, right? The lyrics are, to me, more of a song about that...the spiritual dance between the muse and the artist. Everything that comes from the muse is basically arbitrary. Hunter is just pointing out moments of where ideas have come to him...something he could shape into later. Anyone reading this who has ever had a spark of creativity or inspiration knows that it doesn't do it all for you, it just gets the ball rolling. "his job is to shed light, not to master." The sailor and the lady from Carlisle could be replaced easily with some other Idea but the song would still have that same feeling. Maybe?
Funny enough, After I first read David's Annotated lyric book, I went pretty deep into the topic of a muse. Since most people on here are probably Dylan fans too, and the GD played a good amount of Dylan songs, Ill point this out. He has several songs that could easily be about a muse but could easily be mistaken for your basic love song. Of course this is all merely speculation but My favorite example is "She belongs To Me." She's nobody's child but she also takes somewhat of a spiritual role..."bow down to her on Sunday." I have a few other examples of Dylan songs but Ill stop here.

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By submitting my information, I agree to receive personalized updates and marketing messages about Grateful Dead based on my information, interests, activities, website visits and device data and in accordance with the Privacy Policy. In addition, if I have checked the box above, I agree to receive such updates and messages about similar artists, products and offers. I understand that I can opt-out from messages at any time by emailing privacypolicy@wmg.com.